The *best* and assured way to get listed in ccGoogle is to own the ccTLD and host the site in the country you are targeting also.

However, if you just plan on wacking the same content up as a site you have for a different ccTLD , you will run into duplicate content filter problems.

How this exactly works i'm unsure, perhaps a mod can explain.

Personally I don't understand myself how you can rank for multiple ccTLDs when you only have one website and not have duplicate content if you host the same site on each ccTLD and separate web hosting.

If the country you are targeting has its own language then you can get away with the same content merley by translating it into a different language but for english speaking countries you have a problem unless you change the content for each specific ccTLD site.

Yes the two would technically be duplicates, however remember that there isn't a duplicate penalty per se. It's a duplicate filter. So one or the other site doesn't actually get dinged on the ranking potential side of things, but one or the other is simply going to be filtered when the SERP display is being constructed.

So let's say there was a .com version and a .co.uk version of the same site.

Someone searching from say the US would be more likely to see the .com version because of their personal profile and location. While someone searching from the UK would be more likely to see the co.uk version, especially if they searched for sites from the UK only.

Does that help?

I'm going to move this one to the International section of the forums. If memory serves Ian posted about this very subject recently in a thread there. I'll see if I can find it again.

What happens when ccG! isnt actualy selected, is the same Geo-location info used for the filtering?

Sort of the same thing happens, though not quite as restrictive. There's really not an easy to describe this without actually seeing it in action. But yes Google does factor in things which which version of Google you're using (eg google.com vs google.co.uk, assuming you can even choose which to use), the geo ip location the searcher, whether the searcher selects Sites from xx country or not, etc.

To see it in action one really has only a couple of options. First you can go through the trouble of making sure Google doesn't set any cookies on your machine, in essence de-personalizing your search results, then using a proxy ip that will show you as being from a different country, this being the country you want them to think you're from for the purposes of a search or two. Or you can take the easy way out by installing Firefox and using one of those extensions like GoogleGlobal to give you a sense of what people in some other countries see.

The *best* and assured way to get listed in ccGoogle is to own the ccTLD and host the site in the country you are targeting also.

However, if you just plan on wacking the same content up as a site you have for a different ccTLD , you will run into duplicate content filter problems.

How this exactly works i'm unsure, perhaps a mod can explain.

Personally I don't understand myself how you can rank for multiple ccTLDs when you only have one website and not have duplicate content if you host the same site on each ccTLD and separate web hosting.

If the country you are targeting has its own language then you can get away with the same content merley by translating it into a different language but for english speaking countries you have a problem unless you change the content for each specific ccTLD site.

I could alter the content for the US subfolder, but Google's geotargeting option doesn't work for ccTLD's.

I'm hosting on a .ca domain to appeal to a Canadian audience, yet it's not intended for Canadians only. The US audience is an option as well.Is it fair to assume I'm out of luck when you're hosting on a .ca domain for obtaining Google.com rankings?

Soon I have to make a decision on taking a few extra steps to make parts of my content optimized primarily for Canadian traffic.

I've got a handful of pages that include a few pages that are specifically tailored for Canadians.Other pages are both for US and CA traffic, but potential traffic for specific keywords consists more of US traffic then CA traffic.

Looking into my Google.ca competition I see they're hosting on US servers and in most cases on a .com domain extension.

So if I'm hosting my pages for Canadian traffic on a Canadian server and the site in overall is accessed on a .ca domain it works a bit more in my advantage.

Here is the decision I'm contemplating about if I would be doing the right thing:

1: I'll be hosting the content I want to target specifically to Canadians on subdomains (How to explained on the linked page) that are hosted on a Canadian server.

2: At the same time I'll be hosting the rest of the site on a US server.

Am I on the right track here?

I don't want to create 2 separate domains for this and have one hosted in the US and the other in CA - Wouldn't this be a viable alternative for Google's Set Geographic Target tool?

Since I'm hosting on a .ca server with the sub domain having a .ca extension.

Other content will be hosted on a US server and when I gain more backlinks from pages hosted on US servers it will help increasing the possibility to show up on Google.com for US traffic as well right?